"I'll be most happy to. I'll come down as soon as I get clear. End of the week, perhaps?"
"This is very urgent, Doctor. Damnest thing you ever saw. Big, shaggy elephants and tigers with teeth down to their necks. There's a beaver the size of a bear."
"Fakes," said Amberly, disgusted. "Clever gadgets. Camera angles."
"That's what we thought first, but there are no gadgets, no camera angles. This is the real McCoy."
"I'm on my way," the paleontologist said, hanging up.
Snide item in smug, smartaleck gossip column: Saucers are passé at the Pentagon. There's another mystery that's got the high brass very high.
II
President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Mastodonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return.
"I tell you, Wes," said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury and war, "this is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can't get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along."